Richard Querin channels Seth Goldstein, who writes that strong bloggers no longer link.

I have no idea what planet they are living in, but if I read a blog that doesn't link it usually sucks.

But, anyway, James Kendrick links to an RSS News Aggregator for HDTVs.

I do admit, though, that I haven't been reading many feeds lately. Instead I've been trying to live life, and get around Microsoft.

Today I was hanging out with Steve Ball and famous guitarist Robert Fripp, who was on campus doing some more recording for potential use in Windows Vista. That guy is cool. Certainly cooler than a blogger that never links.

Well, it's official. Microsoft is now in the new world of contextual advertising. It's just like the old world of advertising (Microsoft sells billions of dollars of advertising every year, even before today) but it's more efficient.

But, I don't need to hype this new world up. You all know what I'm talking about. Just look at how Google is getting its money. Or read Memeorandum today.

So, why does Microsoft care so much about the world that Google is the leader in? Well, cause the advertising industry is a lot bigger than the software industry. Translation: the MBA's here see a lot more growth potential in advertising-backed software than they do in software that you go to Fry's and buy.

Not that the model of "buy your software here" is dead. Xbox is proving that. I've already spent hundreds of dollars on games, both on Xbox Live arcade and in stores like BestBuy and Fry's.

But, they look at Google, which has operating margins of 34% (with quarterly revenue growth of 79%), and Yahoo, which has operating margins of 18.79% (which has quarterly revenue growth of 33.5%), and they get excited.

Great, so we're in the game now.

Now what? Well, I look at it like we're in the record business and we need to find great bands to build audiences. Then the advertising folks will be able to put ads on those things and we'll all be happy.

So, do we build a great business by copying the "bands" from other companies? (I'll be honest, that's what we've pretty much done so far). To me that just sounds so boring and uninteresting. Imagine you work a music company and your boss tells you to "copy the Beatles."

Yeah, that'll really work.

The next three years will define Microsoft as a company. It'll be interesting to see how our innovation engine roars to life. We've been making some great acquisitions and hiring some great people. And I hear a major engine tuneup is underway thanks to other things that I can't talk about yet.

The trick is, can we find a new way to compete. One that doesn't rely on the old tricks that teams fell back on in the past? Luckily this time around there's piles of money to be had for all three companies — if we create value and find new audiences.

Just because there was Michael Jackson, or Elvis, or the Beatles, doesn't mean that the Black Eyed Peas couldn't come along and make a sizeable business.

Metaphor switch time.

It's real easy in the technology world to follow the path someone else broke through the ice. But that's lazy.

Microsoft needs a few icebreaking ships to forge a new path.

I see a few being built. But we need more.

David Pogue says that the Ultra Mobile PCs that are starting to ship answers the who, what, when, where, but left out the "why."

I must apologize. I'm very bullish about UMPCs, but there's something more flawed than what David hints at: the price.

I assumed that OEMs would be able to get the price down closer to $500 than $1,000. At $1,000 you can buy a high-powered laptop. These things just won't do well until they drop in price.

If they were cheaper, I could answer the "why" for David. But they aren't. Until they are, we're doomed to a niche market, no matter how useful or cool they are.

Pricing +is+ important here. It's embarrassing that we haven't been able to get the price down to a noticeable gap between low-end laptops.

When the pricing comes down I'll get excited again. I still will probably buy one at $1,000, because I can see enough geeky uses for it (coffee table picture frame, remote control, GPS device and media player for car, etc) but I'm a geek. The fact that I get excited by something doesn't mean the normal person on the street will get excited by it too.

Loren Heiny has some fun with the latest Apple ads.

Oh, I could riff on that theme all day long. But no one loves a blogger that has fun with Apple's marketing campaigns, particularly one that works for Microsoft.

Or I could link to InfoWorld, which points out that security is an industry problem.

But, no, I'll just link to those and let you draw your own conclusions.

I'm real excited by the new Skypecasts. Get 100 of your favorite friends into a Skype call, then record it to an eBay server. Who wants to do a Scoblecast?

My blog was down this morning. Sorry about that. The Wordpress.com folks are working on updating the servers and getting things permanently stable, according to this message on Wordpress.com.

Have you done a Paddy Brown lately?

He was a fireman who died in 9/11.

Over on a Web site memorializing him, one of the letters suggested doing a "Paddy Brown" every day. What's that? Doing something nice for someone else.

Why am I thinking about that?

Well, I met Stephen McCarthy last year and turned out he was working for CNBC as a producer on the Donny Deutsch show. He called my cell phone today and said "I have something for you."

We met up and he handed me a DVD. On it it simply said "Remembering Paddy."

Tonight I watched it.

The first few minutes set the tone. He just filmed Paddy's phone messages. People calling him on the morning of 9/11.

It got worse and worse. Then Stephen told us about his friendship with Paddy (he covered Paddy when he was a video news reporter) and his camera introduced us to Paddy's family and friends.

Can you make a difference in the world? Why don't you try doing a Paddy?

I'll find out when Stephen's video will be on air (he thinks it'll be on one of the major networks in about a month).

While I was at dinner tonight with the LiveSide guys Jason Bogovich called, his voice full of excitement. First he apologized for calling, then asked me "Did you know your Xbox can blog?"

No, I didn't.

"I'll send you email."

I love getting calls like this from people who discovered something cool. Actually, he sent me to Major Nelson's blog and the Major blogged about XboxVoice.com.

Thanks, Jason, for calling!

I spent the evening with the folks who are writing LiveSide, a blog about Windows Live. These guys aren't Microsoft employees. They just thought it'd be interesting to do a blog about Windows Live. They invited me to a dinner and also invited a bunch of people from the various Windows Live teams (there's a ton of them now).

When I got home I checked my feeds about Microsoft and I see that Dave Winer said something about us. He says that Microsoft is falling behind Google and Apple and that we better get our s**t together soon.

True.

But we're fortunate because people like Chris, Harrison, Kip, who like what we're doing enough to build great community sites.

I agree with Dave, though. It's put up or shut up time.

One thing in response to Dave: I am working very hard to make friends among bloggers. My phone number is on my blog. You know how to find me if you need something.

All the content from the Mix06 conference is now online. 50+ hours. Good stuff, including Marc Canter's panel discussion and much more (the videos include all the slides, too). Mike Swanson has more on his blog.

Why is it when you meet someone face to face that your opinions of them change radically? Today I became fans of Donny Deutsch and Jay Z.

Donny hosts a show called the Big Idea on CNBC. He asked Bill some excellent questions like "what do you get pissed about?" Bill tried to weasel out of that and Donny had none of it. Bill was really stumped. He also asked "what would you say to Google?" He set a high bar for interviewing Bill that I hope I'll get to meet someday.

Jay Z is a rapper. But he breaks all the stereotypes. He's astute. Personable. And is interesting to listen to.

Donny's interview with Bill Gates will be on CNBC on Monday and Jay Z's interview will be up next week.

Anyway, both interviews are ones you should consider checking out.

So, this afternoon I was sitting in building 33 (aka Microsoft's conference center) listening to Donny Deutsch interview Bill Gates and later JayZ for CNBC in front of hundreds of advertising executives. I was sitting in the back row, taking notes. It was an interesting set of interviews. But that isn't what was interesting.

Three guys were sitting next to me. At the end they started saying that hearing Bill talk changed their opinions about him and Microsoft. Heh, he has the same effect on me.

But, then, I ask the three what do they do?

Two were execs at Procter and Gamble. But the third guy was an exec at Discovery Channel.

My jaw dropped. I had just written about Discovery Channel on my blog.

I was so flabbergasted that I forgot to get his name. But, I did ask him about the effect of HDTV on Discovery.

He said it is huge. They invested in the best HDTV equipment of any major cable network, he told me. It totally changed their brand and advertisers love the results they are getting. Why? Because HDTV owners are early adopters. They tend to be more educated, more affluent, more likely to buy new things. Which makes them far more valuable to advertisers, as a group, than others.

"Why isn't all the advertising in HD?" I asked. I noticed this because I usually fast-forward through the advertising. Now, if you have a new HDTV screen you know that non-HD advertising will only display in 4:3 mode, which is narrower than the 16:9 format that HDTV displays in. This makes it really easy to fast forward through. You just stop when you see the wide-screen stuff again. Well, I've found that sometimes I stop and just watch the HD advertising.

The Discovery exec concurred and said that HD advertising was working better than non-HD advertising. He thinks that advertisers are blowing it by not shooting everything in HD.

Anyway, sometimes life just brings weird coincidences. This was one of them.

In addition to my suprising lunch with the food company execs, I found another thing that was very different: that advertising folks dress and talk very differently from geeks.

There are more suits over in our building 33 today than I remember seeing at any geek event. Geeks like building software and cool experiences. These folks want to brand, want to push out messages, want to get you to see their solutions.

When I see oil and water I see business opportunities. People who can bridge these two groups and get them together can create value. Massive value. Remember, the advertising industry is about 10x what the software industry is.

MSN and Windows Live are hosting a big strategic account conference. Remember the Google Zeitgeist event I spoke at last fall? This is the same thing, but bigger.

At lunch I chose a table that had some executives from a major food product services company (you'd know their brand name if I said it, but I'll keep that confidential). During lunch we talked about what objectives they had as advertisers. They aren't able to deal with disruptive technologies like blogging or video blogging. Why? Cause they can't participate in those channels themselves.

How do I know that?

Well, at some point someone mentioned that a TV crew wanted to interview them about a campaign they had developed. The answer was quick and immediate: "are you kidding?" Their corporate culture had ingrained in them that they must get corporate approval from the PR team before doing any press interviews. "That's what we call silly thinking," one guy said.

I told the table "well, I guess you aren't allowed to blog then, right?"

They looked at me like I had just spoken Farsi to them.

What was weird is when I checked into Memeorandum, I found this article on ClickZ: Report Shows Marketers Stick with Proven Interactive Media.

I think it's very weird when my lunch conversations match what reports are showing. Me? I'm glad I work at a company that lets me blog.

Ahh, my new HDTV is really beautiful. It causes me to stare at Discovery Channel until 2 a.m.

OK, OK, Maryam and I watched CSI Miami last night and, boy, does it look good!

But, it is rotting my brain. For one, YouTube or most Internet-based video just doesn't measure up anymore.

For two, I used to be able to read RSS feeds while watching TV. Now my new HDTV set keeps me from even turning on the computer.

Help, Discovery Channel has kidnapped my brain. I watched an inane show about expensive cars last night. On my old TV this is the kind of thing that would have survived four seconds before I flipped the TV. Now that it's in HDTV I'm just mesmerized.

Chris Pirillo warned me about this. He said he watches baseball games now and he HATES baseball. Why? Cause it's so pretty.

On the other hand, the HD DVD team here at Microsoft just started a blog. Maybe I'll invite them over for beer and Discovery channel! (They answered back that if I think the Discovery Channel looks good that I should check out what an HD-DVD looks like! (OK, OK, you guys are invited, I'll buy dinner, popcorn, and drinks, just bring me an HD-DVD!)

Oh, there's one more disadvantage of living in a geek area: I tried to buy an HD-DVD drive last night at Best Buy and the salesguy said he had a waiting list that was really long. Sigh.

Ahh, you too can act like a program manager and have your own subservient programmer. Tell him to write on the whiteboard. Drink a coke. Or spin in his chair. Someone has too much time on their hands.

On the other hand, Josh Bancroft has attracted a troll from possibly inside his own company (Intel) who says that Josh should be forced to stop blogging for Intel and use his time for more "productive" purposes. Sigh. I guess some people would get rid of any human contact inside companies. No more speaking at conferences. No more answering the mail or the phones. No more going on sales calls. After all, there's more productive things to do, right? Heh!

Ever want to get RSS Feeds into Outlook Express (like how I read feeds in NewsGator in Outlook)? Inclue lets you do just that. Update: today's version works in Outlook, they are readying a version for Outlook Express. Sorry for the confusion.

If the subservient programmer makes you ill, then maybe you'd like something a little more sophisticated? How about a WineCamp in California's Calaveras County. It's taking place May 26-28 (wish I could be there, but alas, got other plans already). It'll be a bunch of geeks, do-gooders, and lots of wine.

Me? We're having XboxCamp at our house this summer. How do you get in? Gotta make friends with Patrick. Heheh. Speaking of Xbox, there's a lengthy article on the engineering in the Xbox over on Electronic Business Online. Even better, give your Xbox a voice with 360voice.com (it compiles information from your gamerfeed and delivers it as a blog).

Off to go play on my new screen.

David Webster, the guy who runs naming at Microsoft, answered my post and various commenters here.

He says "simpler, better names" are coming. "I’m certainly not trying to “cancel Christmas” as one of the posters suggested."

Every Microsoft employee who names things should spend some time with David (he has a challenge for them, and corrects me too). I'm trying to get David to come on video to talk about his approach and how he's trying to change our naming strategy.

I think you'd enjoy meeting him and everyone who names things would learn from him.

Gartner is saying that Windows Vista may be delayed again. Microsoft reacted, ComputerWorld says in an article that gives both sides of the story (Microsoft says that Gartner is wrong).

More on Memeorandum.

A bunch of people have been emailing me asking for my opinions. I'm staying out of this one cause I've learned over and over that I can't accurately predict shipping dates in the software industry. I will say that I'm enjoying the latest builds of Windows Vista and things are looking good, so I have no reason to doubt Microsoft's spokespeople on this one.

Again, I'd rather pressure the Windows team to get it right, and don't ship unless it's ready. Dana Epp, security expert, says the same thing.

They are talking about it over on Channel 9 too.

Update: Ed Bott says that Gartner isn't very accurate with its own predictions on software dates.

I spent some time last week with Bill Lazar and Offer Ben-Shachar of the search engine they call "RawSugar."

They showed me an early version of their new blog integration (er, Wordpress Widget) as well as their new outline view, which is generated via tags. This engine has come a long way in just a few months since I first wrote about it.

Is it a Google/Yahoo/MSN killer? No. But this could be a game changer for bloggers.

Why? Well, take a look at a search for "Scobleizer" on RawSugar. Look down the left side. Notice the categorization? I think that's awesome! They are the first engine to do this (you have to add your page to their engine and do a little bit of work to make this come out like this).

Anyway, it's not perfect, but RawSugar is demonstrating that search isn't done and that a small company with very few developers can still do things that the big companies can't, or won't, do.

Congrats guys!

I didn't get to stay as long as I would have liked at this weekend's MindCamp, but the five hours I spent there were really great. Some of the best networking I've seen (employees from Amazon, Boeing, Microsoft, along with many others, all mixing together and having fun — and the sessions that I attended were inspiring and interesting). The Technorati results from MindCamp show that it was a huge success.

But, the high water mark in my mind was the Maker Faire. This is a different kind of event from MindCamp. Sort of a "Burning Man Lite." The On10 folks were there with their camcorder and have an interesting report that shows you some of the interesting things you would have seen there (Laura Foy with a flamethrower is a little too hot for me, though).